Knowing is not enough;
we must apply.
Willing is not enough;
we must do. - Goethe

You cannot teach a man anything. You can
only help him discover it within
himself. - Galileo Galilei

For learning to take place with any kind
of efficiency students must be
motivated. To be motivated, they must
become interested. And they become
interested when they are actively
working on projects which they can
relate to their values and goals in
life. - Gus Tuberville, President,
William Penn College

I never
teach my pupils; I only attempt to
provide the conditions in which they can
learn. - Albert Einstein

It takes two to
speak the truth,--one to speak, and another to
hear. - Henry David Thoreau

The real voyage of discovery consists
not in seeking new lands, but in seeing
with new eyes. - Marcel Proust, French
novelist

To know yet
to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao-Tzu (6th century B.C.), Legendary
Chinese philosopher.

When you
know something, say what you know. When
you don't know something, say that you
don't know. That is knowledge. - Kung Fu
Tzu (Confucius)

What I
hear, I forget.
What I see, I remember.
What I do, I understand.
- Kung Fu Tzu (Confucius)

There
can be no knowledge without emotion. We
may be aware of a truth, yet until we
have felt its force, it is not ours. To
the cognition of the brain must be added
the experience of the soul. - Arnold
Bennett (1867-1931), British novelist.
The Journals of Arnold Bennett
(1932), entry for 18 March 1897.

If you
want to know the taste of a pear, you
must change the pear by eating it
yourself. . . . If you want to know the
theory and methods of revolution, you
must take part in revolution. All
genuine knowledge originates in direct
experience. - Mao Zedong (1893-1976),
founder of the People's Republic of
China. Speech, July 1937,
Yenan, China.

Let’s
review some good lifestyle options we can follow
to maintain, and improve, our vibrant brains.

1.
Learn
what the “It”
is in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic
understanding will serve you well to
appreciate your brain’s beauty as a living
and constantly developing dense forest with
billions of neurons and synapses. "Know
thyself," also applies here. What do you do that
negatively impacts your performance? Here are
two "brain drainers":

- high-levels of anxiety and
stress are guaranteed to
distract us from our main goals and waste
our limited mental energies.

- a very repetitive and
routine-driven life, lacking in
novelty and stimulation. We have brains
to be able to learn and to adapt to new
environments

The trick therefore, is to take on new
challenges that are not way too difficult/
impossible, and learn how to manage stress to
prevent anxiety from kicking-in.

2. Take care
of your
nutrition. Did you
know that the brain only weighs 2% of body
mass but consumesover 20% of the
oxygen and nutrients we intake? As a
general rule, you don’t need expensive
ultra-sophisticated nutritional
supplements, just make sure you don’t
stuff yourself with the “bad stuff”.

The bottom line is that foods that are
good for our body are also good for our brain. Omega-3 fatty acids, found in cold-water fish
such as mackerel, herring, salmon, and tuna have shown some
brain benefits. There is
contraditory data on Ginkgo Biloba and most
other supplements. The best
“brain food” is, literally, mental
stimulation.

3. Remember
that the brain is part of the body. Things
that
exercise your body can
also help sharpen your brain: physical
exercise enhances neurogenesis. Our brains are composed of different areas
and functions, and we can strengthen them
through mental exercise– or they get
atrophied for lack of practice. Physical
exercise is important because it influences the
rate of creation of new neurons in our brains. The
benefits are both short term
(improved concentration and memory,
sustained mental clarity under stressful
situations…, and long-term
(creation of a “brain reserve” that help
protect us against potential problems such as
Alzheimer’s).

- For stress management:
a 5-minute visualization, combining
deep and regular breathings with seeing
in our mind’s eye beautiful landscapes
and/ or remembering times in our past when
we have been successful at a tough task

- For short-term memory:
try a series subtracting 7 from 200 (200
193 186 179…), or a series involving
multiplication (2,3 4,6 6,9 8,12…) or
exponential series (2 4 8 16 32 64…) the
goal is not to be a math genius, simply to
train and improve our short-term memory.
Another way is to try and remember our
friends telephone numbers.

- In general: try something different
every day, no matter how little. Take a
different route to work. Talk to a
different colleague. Ask an unexpected
question. Approach every day as a
living experiment, a learning
opportunity.

4. Practice
positive, future-oriented
thoughts until they
become your default mindset and you look
forward to every new day in a
constructive way. Stress and anxiety, no
matter whether induced by external events
or by your own thoughts, actually kills
neurons and prevent the creation of new
ones. You
can think of chronic stress as the opposite
of exercise: it prevents the creation of
new neurons.

5. Thrive on
Learning and
Mental Challenges.
The point of having a brain is precisely
to learn and to adapt to challenging new
environments. Once new neurons appear in
your brain, where they stay in your brain
and how long they survive depends on how
you use them. “Use It or Lose It” does not
mean “do crossword puzzle a a day″. It means, “challenge your brain
often with fundamentally new activities”.

“Use it or lose it”
may be misleading if we think that “It” is just one thing. The
brain is composed of many different areas
that focus on different things. Doing a
cross­word puzzle only activates a small part
of the brain. The 3 key principles for good
brain exercises are: novelty, variety
and constant challenge. Not that
different from cross-training our bodies.

The first time we do a crossword, or sudoku
or knitting, that is great, because it forces
us to learn. But when doing it is completely
routine, the marginal benefit is very
limited. Nowadays neuropsychologists do
not recommend paper-based activities but
computer-based brain exercise software
programs, since they can provide a variety of
new activities all the time, always tailored
with a proper increasing level of challenge.

6. We are (as
far as we know) the only self-directed
organisms on this planet.
Aim high. Once you
graduate from high school and college, keep learning.
The brain keeps developing, no matter
your age, and it reflects what you do
with it.

7.
Explore, travel. Adapting to
new locations forces you to pay more
attention to your environment. Make new
decisions, use your brain.

8.
Don’t Out­source Your Brain.
Not to media personalities, not to
politicians, not to your smart neighbor…
Make your own decisions, and mistakes. And
learn from them. That way, you are training
your brain, not your neighbor’s.

9. Develop and
maintainstimulating friendships.
We are “social animals”, and need social
interaction. Which, by the way, is why
‘Baby Einstein’ has been shown not to be
the panacea for children's brain development.

10.
Laugh. Often.
Especially to cognitively complex humor,
full of twists and surprises. Better, try
to become the next Jon Stewart

Now, remember
that what counts is not reading this article, but practicing a bit every day
until small steps snowball into unstoppable,
internalized habits…so, pick your next battle
and try to start improving at least one of
these 10 habits today. Revisit
the habit above that really grabbed your
attention, click on the link to learn
more,

and make a
decision to try something different
today

Brain Exercises:

The Stroop
Test

A paper version of the task involves showing words
that are the names of colors, although the actual words are printed
in a color of ink different from the color name they represent. You
are asked to respond with the color you see, and inhibit (disregard)
the word you read.It turns out that this is much harder than it
sounds and research documents lower scores with increased
attentional fatigue.

As part of a study of the effect of high altitudes on mountain
climbers NOVA has created an interactive web-based version of the
Stroop task. This version is available by clicking here:
NOVA-Stroop.